An heir living abroad can inherit property in India, but money leaves the country only up to USD 1 million a year without Reserve Bank approval

Under section 6(5) of the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999 (FEMA), rule 24(c) of the Foreign Exchange Management (Non-debt Instruments) Rules, 2019 and the Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) Master Direction on immovable property, a non-resident Indian (NRI) or overseas citizen of India (OCI) may inherit any immovable property in India, agricultural land included. The RBI's Master Direction on Remittance of Assets lets an authorised dealer bank remit inherited assets and their sale proceeds abroad up to USD 1 million a financial year. Whether the heir also needs probate or a succession certificate turns on the asset and, for a will, on section 213 of the Indian Succession Act, 1925, which Parliament omitted by an Act that received assent on 20 December 2025.

Who can inherit immovable property in India while living abroad?

Section 6(5) of FEMA, as the RBI restates it in its Master Direction on immovable property, lets a person resident outside India hold, own and transfer immovable property in India if it was acquired or held when that person was resident in India, or was inherited from a person resident in India. The detail now sits in the Foreign Exchange Management (Non-debt Instruments) Rules, 2019, notified on 17 October 2019.

Rule 24(c) is the inheritance clause for an NRI or an OCI. The Master Direction defines an NRI as a person resident outside India who is a citizen of India, and an OCI as one registered as an Overseas Citizen of India cardholder. Either may inherit any immovable property in India from a person resident outside India who acquired it lawfully, and paragraph 3.1.4 of the Master Direction adds, plainly, inheritance from a person resident in India.

The word is "any". Rule 24(a) and (b), on purchase and gift, exclude agricultural land, farm houses and plantation property, and rule 24(c) does not, so on its words inherited farmland is open to an NRI or OCI heir. The exclusion returns on exit: rule 24(d) lets the heir transfer any property to a resident, while rule 24(e) allows a transfer to another NRI or OCI only of non-agricultural property.

A foreign national who is neither an NRI nor an OCI is not named in rule 24 and inherits from a resident under section 6(5) itself. Rule 31 requires the RBI's prior permission for citizens of Pakistan, Bangladesh, China and eight other listed jurisdictions to acquire or transfer immovable property in India, other than on a lease of up to five years, and exempts an OCI.

Who are the heirs when there is no will?

That depends on the deceased's religion, not on where the heir lives. The Hindu Succession Act, 1956 applies under section 2 to Hindus in any of their forms, Buddhists, Jainas and Sikhs, and to anyone who is not a Muslim, Christian, Parsi or Jew unless Hindu law would not have governed that person.

For a male Hindu who dies intestate, section 8 gives four tiers in order: class I relatives in the Schedule, then class II, then agnates, then cognates. Under section 9 class I heirs take together and exclude everyone else. Class I, as the Schedule stands after the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005, has sixteen entries: the son, daughter, widow and mother, and the children, grandchildren and widows in the branches of pre-deceased sons and daughters that the Schedule names. A daughter is a class I heir whether she lives in Mumbai or London.

Under section 10 the widow, or all widows together, take one share, and each surviving son, each surviving daughter and the mother take one share each. A pre-deceased child's branch takes one share between its members.

Section 6, as substituted by the Hindu Succession (Amendment) Act, 2005, makes a daughter a coparcener by birth in a Mitakshara joint family, and a coparcener's interest passes by succession, not survivorship. The Act came into force on a date the Central Government was to appoint by notification, and we have not read that notification. The illustration assumes the flat was the father's self-acquired property.

When is probate or a succession certificate needed?

Probate, defined in section 2(f) of the Indian Succession Act, 1925, is a court-certified copy of a will with a grant of administration, and under section 227 it establishes the will from the testator's death. A succession certificate, granted by the District Judge under Part X, covers debts and securities, which section 370(2) defines to include shares in a company (clause (b), on securities charged on Indian revenues by the United Kingdom Parliament, is omitted by the 2025 Act below). A flat is neither.

For a Hindu intestate, section 212(2) disapplies the letters of administration rule, so no grant is a precondition to the heirs' right in the flat. For a bank deposit, the District Judge where the deceased ordinarily resided may grant a succession certificate under section 371, on a petition giving the particulars in section 372. Section 381 makes it conclusive against the debtor and protects a bank that pays the holder in good faith. Section 214 bars a court from decreeing a debt to a person claiming on succession unless the claimant produces probate, letters of administration or a succession certificate.

The rule called compulsory probate was section 213. Until 20 December 2025 no right as executor or legatee could be established in court without probate or letters of administration with the will annexed. Section 213(2) confined the bar to wills of Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs and Jainas of the kinds in section 57(a) and (b), and to certain Parsi wills. Section 57 reaches wills made on or after 1 September 1870 within territories then under the Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal or within the ordinary original civil jurisdiction of the High Courts at Madras and Bombay, and wills made elsewhere so far as they concern immovable property inside those limits. A Hindu's will leaving a Mumbai flat to a daughter in London could fall in that class.

The Repealing and Amending Act, 2025 (No. 37 of 2025) changed this. The Gazette of India Extraordinary of 21 December 2025 recites assent on 20 December 2025. Its Second Schedule omits section 213, omits ", 213" from section 3(1), and amends section 370 so that a certificate is barred only where a right must be established "by letters of administration". The text has no commencement clause of its own, and section 4 saves things already done and rights already acquired. Section 57 and section 212 are untouched. Probate remains available, conclusive under section 227, and one of the documents section 214 recognises. What went is the rule that the right fails in court without it.

A will proved in a court outside the State, within or beyond India, can ground letters of administration with an authenticated copy annexed, under section 228.

How does inherited money reach the heir's account abroad?

Under the Master Direction on Remittance of Assets, updated on 29 June 2026, an authorised dealer (AD) bank may allow an NRI or Person of Indian Origin, which includes an OCI cardholder, to remit up to USD 1 million per financial year on documentary evidence out of non-resident (ordinary) rupee account balances, sale proceeds of assets or assets acquired by inheritance, and the RBI's prior approval is needed above that. Rule 29 of the Rules, the same-AD requirement and the undertaking on account balances are set out in our note on selling property in India and remitting abroad.

What does holding the property from abroad involve?

Section 6(5) gives the heir ownership, and we found no time limit in the Rules or the Directions. Rule 30(1) otherwise bars a non-resident from transferring property unless the Act or Rules allow it, and rule 30(2) allows a transfer to a resident through banking channels. A gift to another NRI or OCI is limited by paragraph 3.2 of the Master Direction to a relative under section 2(77) of the Companies Act, 2013. What a housing society or sub-registrar asks before recording the new owner is practice that we have not sourced.

What do the figures look like?

An illustration. The family, property and values are hypothetical, and the exchange rate is illustrative. Meera, an Indian citizen living in London, is an NRI. Her father, a Hindu resident in Mumbai, died without a will in March 2026, leaving a flat valued at INR 1.8 crore and a bank deposit of INR 30 lakh. His class I heirs are his widow, his son and Meera. His own mother died before him.

Division under section 10 of the Hindu Succession Act, 1956
  Shares: widow, son, daughter                                 3
  Flat per share                                               INR 60 lakh
  Deposit per share                                            INR 10 lakh
  Meera's total                                                INR 70 lakh

Had the father's mother been alive (4 shares)
  Meera's total                                                INR 52.5 lakh

Remittance in the year of sale (illustrative INR 90 = USD 1)
  Annual cap of USD 1 million                                  INR 9 crore
  Meera's remittance, before tax                               about USD 77,800
  Share of the cap used                                        under 8 per cent

The flat passes without a grant, and the deposit needs a succession certificate if the bank requires one, unless it carries a nomination under section 45ZA of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949, the effect of which we have not examined. Had the father left a will made within the ordinary original civil jurisdiction of the Bombay High Court, it would have fallen under section 57(a), and before 20 December 2025 a right under it could not have been established in court without probate.

What remains unsettled?

Four points.

What rule 24(c) means by inheritance from a person "resident in India". The words sit as clause (ii) under "who had acquired such property", and the Master Direction restates the case separately. Both reach the same heir, but the drafting is not clean.

Whether the omission of section 213 changes what registrars, housing societies and banks ask for. It removes a bar in court. It does not say an unprobated will must be accepted for mutation or payment, and section 57 stays in the Act. We have not seen a judgment or circular on it.

Which documents an AD wants. The Master Direction says "documentary evidence" and lists none.

Whether the savings clause in section 4 of the 2025 Act keeps section 213 alive for a death or will before 20 December 2025 when the suit comes later. The clause saves rights already acquired and things already done, and we have not seen a judgment on it. Tax on a sale or remittance, including under the Income-tax Act, 2025, is not covered here.